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BRITAIN took its first innocent step into the quicksands of Europe on January 1, 1973, led through the nose by devious Tory PM Ted Heath.

On Friday, exactly 17,197 days later, we will be out.

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We cheerfully joined the six original member states in what the Prime Minister promised was no more than a Common Market of trading nations.

In those optimistic early years even The Sun was an enthusiastic supporter.

As was new Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, who paraded in a garish pullover featuring the flags of nine member states at the referendum in 1975.

Today we can claim to have been a major force in the long-running campaign to leave.

In the 1980s we waved the British flag and stormed the battlements of Brussels.

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We were repulsed in more ways than one. But we never abandoned the fight to run our own country.

Today, with foreign cash flooding into the UK economy, new jobs and rising prosperity, we can claim we did our bit.

By the time we finally break free at 11pm on Friday, in a blaze of celebratory fireworks, we will have spent nearly half a century at the heart of Europe.

Most of us will be glad to wave goodbye.

We will retake command of our borders. Germany can invite as many unvetted migrants as it likes. We will not be bound by the European Court of Justice.

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The Queen, privately believed to be a staunch Brexiteer, has signed our release. Her consent to the Withdrawal Act delivers Boris Johnsons 2016 Brexit pledge: Take Back Control.

The EU anthem, Beethovens Ode To Joy, struck a sour note for many British voters especially our fishermen, who saw their billion pound industry gobbled up by marauding foreign fleets.

For all Ted Heaths sly denials, his goal from the outset was to bind the whole continent into a federal superstate a country called Europe. Then, in 1990, a bombshell document revealed how he sold us down the river.

Lord Chancellor Lord Kilmuir, the Governments most senior law officer, had warned him of serious surrenders of sovereignty which ought to be brought out into the open.

Heath ignored the warning, kept it under wraps and pressed on into Europe. The Sun was among the first to spot the covert and hotly denied plot to build a superstate.

We became the siren voice of disillusioned voters against Brussels meddling in what Europhile Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd called every nook and cranny of public life.

We made life hell for faceless bureaucrats and dud EU politicians. We were denounced as scaremongers. Other countries struggled in vain against power-grabbing regulation and slippery treaty changes.

Brussels own EuroStat polls revealed deep misgivings among its 500million citizens over the drive to centralise power over currencies and borders.

During the 2016 Brexit campaign, the anti-EU mood was even stronger in France. President Emmanuel Macron admitted he would not dare risk a referendum there.

He remembered the 1990s, when France, Ireland and Denmark balked at a pan-European Constitution turning them into EU colonies. They voted No only to be told to keep voting until they got it right.

Eventually the Constitution was imposed by stealth as the Lisbon Treaty and the EU decided never to risk consulting the people about anything ever again.

In the 1980s, the Commission launched an experiment, aptly known as The Snake, to abolish national currencies.

We raised the alarm, but in 1990 the European Commission president Jacques Delors pressed ahead with plans for the ill-fated euro.

Our stunning Page One headline, Up Yours Delors, published that year on November 1, has echoed down the decades.

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Thousands of Sun readers heeded our call to face East at noon, and bawl at Gaul.

In a pincer movement, we invaded Brussels with an armoured car full of Page 3 girls.

Our offensive was greeted with thin smiles...of panic. The Sun and its coverage of EU twists and turns became compulsory reading in the chancellories of Europe.

I was told our stories and editorials dominated Foreign Office cables to embassies across the EU.

In the battle to save the Pound, it really was The Sun what won it.

It was this newspaper that stopped Tony Blair, then all-powerful after two election triumphs, from scrapping Sterling and signing up to the single currency without a referendum.

With The Sun in opposition, he had no chance of winning.

Today, our stand is vindicated.

Despite Project Fears darkest predictions, the UK economy as we prepare to leave is growing faster than any other country in Europe.

Our jobless tally has plunged to 3.8 per cent the nearest thing to full employment and the envy of the blighted eurozone.

Millions of jobless young Europeans have flocked here in search of work they cannot find at home. Foreign firms are lining up to invest in UKplc.

The number of French people living in London is enough to make it Frances sixth-biggest city.

Brussels deepest fear is a Pied Piper effect as other member states watch the UK break free from an undemocratic political bloc and follow suit.

As The Suns Political Editor for 23 years, I enjoyed a ringside seat at summits and conferences around Europe, alongside Prime Ministers from Thatcher to Blair.

The power of nation states, leached away to Brussels, was the issue at every gathering.

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In the end, it brought down arguably Britains greatest peace-time Prime Minister.

Margaret Thatchers final blazing act of defiance before she was kicked out of office is seared in my memory.

She told a cheering House of Commons: What is the point of trying to get elected to Parliament only to hand over your Sterling and hand over the powers of this House to Brussels?

She accused Jacques Delors of diverting Parliaments power to tame MEPs, an unelected Commission and an unaccountable Council of Ministers.

No. No. No! she stormed.

Days later, she was out of office. But her words became a rallying cry to the Conservative Partys army of Eurosceptics.

These were the Tory bastards who made life hell for John Major as he signed the Maastricht Treaty, clearing the way for political and economic union.

They were the swivel-eyed lunatics who eight years later fought the euro, which was the greatest act of economic self-harm in peacetime Europe.

Britain thankfully kept its own currency. They were Sun readers who flocked to Nigel Farages Ukip and, later, his lethally effective Brexit Party.

From the very start, Brussels has been besieged by allegations of cheating and corruption.

In 1999, the entire European Commission including Transport Commissioner and ex-Labour leader Neil Kinnock were forced to quit amid damning claims of fraud and nepotism.

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Ironically, Kinnock had started political life, along with Tony Benn and pet parrot Jeremy Corbyn, as ardent anti-marketeers only to jump aboard the EU gravy train as a well-paid Commissioner, together with his wife, Glenys, and son, Stephen, now a Labour MP.

Even Kinnock could not match scheming svengali Peter Mandelson, whose road to riches began as EU Trade Commissioner with controversial links to Russian aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

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It was this twisted relationship with Brussels and Labours chaotic stance on Brexit which among other things cost them the last election.

How will it end?

Britain will thrive and prosper. Without us, and our 14billion a year, the European Union will struggle to survive.

The Key Rows

June 5 1975 FIRST REFERENDUM

BARELY two years after joining, a referendum was held on whether to stay in. Labour PM Harold Wilson backed Remain against a majority in his own party. He failed to persuade his wife Mary to vote in favour but two-thirds of voters took his advice and voted to stay in the bloc.

Nov 1 1990 Up Yours, Delors

OUR legendary front page headline was in response to European Commission president Jacques Delors efforts to force us into a European superstate. Margaret Thatcher was fiercely opposed and his plans melted away.

Feb 7 1992 Maastricht Treaty

PM John Major signed away much of Britains sovereignty in the treaty that formed the newly named European Union. The UK did win some opt-outs from the single currency and social chapter but critics say it still undermined the supremacy of our Parliament.

May 1 2004 EU Enlargement

LABOUR PM Tony Blair opened the door to migrants from ten new member states including seven from the ex-Soviet bloc without the restrictions imposed by Germany, France and Italy. Estimates of 13,000 migrants a year were wildy off the peak figure of 252,000 in 2010 alone.

June 23 Second Referrendum

AFTER being elected Ukip leader in 2006, Nigel Farage drove the campaign for an in-out referendum, something that had often been promised but never delivered. With support for Ukip threatening to deprive David Cameron of victory in the 2015 General Election, the Tories pledged to hold a referendum if they won. The historic vote came on June 23 the next year.

Dec 12 2019 General Election

FOLLOWING a bitter three years of Brexit wrangling on top of five decades of disputes over the EU the question is finally settled by a General Election. The public give Boris Johnson an 80-seat majority, enabling him to break the deadlock and finally deliver on the referendum result. It was a big swing on the indecisive 2017 election that saw then-PM Theresa May lose her majority.

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The 17,197 days of Britain being throttled by Europeans as we break free on Friday - The Sun